Note some of the plays below while at RADA were not full plays but sections from plays.
Gareth (Horizon NL#21): I actually got into acting by accident. I decided I wanted to carry on being a student, and I thought: well, I can't paint, so I'll try acting. I went back to one of my teachers at school who'd been in charge of drama, etc., and asked if he would coach me. I then auditioned for RADA, which was then the only drama school I knew existed in those days! I got into RADA, and one day halfway through the two year course, I was coming downstairs and found myself thinking: I quite like this game, it's rather fun! I then decided that as long as I could cope with my responsibilities financially, I might as well carry on acting. I've been fairly lucky, so I've kept going. But that was how I got in. Purely by accident, because I decided I wanted to go on being a student, and then was lucky enough to get into drama school.
Gareth (FCG#7): One of the teachers who was teaching so-called "technique"... There were sixteen people in the class, and he gave each of us a different Shakespeare speech, and he said to me, "During the course of the speech, Gareth, I want you to go away, learn it, work at it, come back, do it for me, and during the course of the speech I want you to stand on your head against the wall there, I want you to pick up this chair by the leg, I want you to walk three times down there, I want you to pick your nose," and various other things. We all sat there, "What's this?" However, when you're students, you go and you do what you're told. So we worked hard at our speeches, we came back and we did them. I did my speech, found a place where I thought it would be reasonable for Hamlet too actually do a handstand against the wall, picked up the chair, walked around and did everything else and he criticised: "That worked for me, that didn't work for me," and at the end of about three days, when we had all done our speeches, he said, "I dare say all of you are wondering what the fuck I've been doing. What a damned silly exercise! Well, I'll tell you what I've been doing. If you can make me belive all those damn silly things I asked you to do, you go out to the professional theatre, and anything any director ever asked you to do, you could make it work, and there aren't many people who can do that." That was the most valuable lesson I learned at RADA. If a diector tells me "On that word, I want you to move over there," I may disagree with him, I may argue, but I can make it work.
Stephen Grief (Blake's 7 the Inside Story): On the first day (at RADA), we were given a talk by the principal, then were told "Now you're starting your first term, and just to explain to you how things go here, somebody from the fourth term is going to give you a talk." In walked this guy with a beard, wearing a leotard; a very bouncy, smiley, jokey guy who put us at our ease right away, who said "Hello, my name is Gareth Thomas." He made all of us feel extremely relaxed and laughed and joked like we were part of a big club, and went through the general points of what we were to do in our first term. Then he got up and said goodbye, and we all felt very much at ease. I'll never forget that, and Gareth and I have remained good friends ever since.
Gareth talking to the Edinburgh News:"In my first theatre production my big scene involved walking on stage and opening a door for somebody. "I walked on to the stage, opened the door . . . and it came off its hinges. So at the end of my first ever professional stage appearance I had to pick up the door and walk off stage with it."
Note he was there for 7 terms spanning 1964 to 1966 we are not yet sure which are in which year.
He mentioned Feste in Twelfth Night although it was his portrayal of the Sea Captain which was singled out for particular praise - according to the records of RADA.
Gareth talking to Ken Armstrong in Blake's 7 magazine: I was playing the part of Laertes, working up to the big sword-fight where Laertes dies. The actor duelling with me lost part of the end of his blade, meaning his sword was six inches shorter than normal... and the rubber bung placed on tip for safety was also missing. As this happened in a flurry of sword blades, the audience did did not know a piece had broken off. By accident the now sharp blade grazed me and caused just a little bleeding.
The dramatic part happened, though, when I fell back on stage with the sword apparently in me. A woman in the front row stared at me, saw the sword was shorter than normal and that I was actually bleeding a little. She obviously thought the sword had really gone through me... and had a fit of hysterics! There, I thought to myself... I'm really getting through to the audience!
| The Long,
the Short and the Tall
While at RADA. A play about soldiers by Willis Hall. Gareth played Lance Corporal Macleish
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| The Avengers:
Murdersville(ABC - Associated British Corporation).
The classic spy spoof series. This was the 7th episode in the sixth season broadcast on ITV. (Some reference books incorectly list this as episode 23 of season 5 - these episodes were in fact filmed and broadcast in two blocks of 16 and 8 episodes respectively.) Gareth appears uncredited in a short scene, in a non-speaking but effective role. In Little Storping in the Swuff, a typically idyllic Avengers-type English country village, the locals have provided a haven for assassins and murderers. For a fee, they will turn a blind eye to any killings that occur in their village, and even help with the planning of the crimes. Gareth plays one of the killers taking advantage of their services. In his short scene, he waits silently in the village pub, wearing dark glasses and drinking a pint of beer, until the appointed hour when his victim arrives. Then he gets up, collects a shotgun from the landlord, and goes outside. We hear gunshots, then Gareth returns the gun to the landlord and calmly resumes drinking his beer. |
 After the shooting (32K) |
| Quatermass
and the Pit (Hammer Films, 1967). Directed by Roy Ward Baker. Starring
James Donald, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley (Dr. Plaxton in Stardrive)
and Julian Glover (Kayn in Breakdown). An intelligent and literate
sf thriller, adapted from the tv serial of the same name by Nigel Kneale.
Prehistoric skeletons are unearthed during the excavation of a new London
underground line, leading to unexpected discoveries about the true heritage
of mankind - culminating in the resurrection of an ancient Martian lifeforce.
Gareth has a non-speaking part near the beginning as one of the construction
workers who discover the skeletons. The film was called 5 Million Years
to Earth for US release. Gareth's part was filmed in July 1966. This small part has been used as the trailer for the whole film. Gareth to the Edinburgh Evening News 16 Jan 2000: "They built up this very expensive plaster of Paris tube station wall with real clay carefully put in and the alien skeleton set behind it. "The director told me to take a pickaxe and hit the top of the clay so that the whole section of wall would fall away. He suggested a rehearsal first, and warned me not to actually hit the thing. "So I swung the pick, stopped it dead an inch from the wall ... and the head flew off and smashed the whole thing. "There was a moment's absolute silence broken only by the director yelling "props'! It took three hours to rebuild."
|
 The moment of discovery (62K) |
Gareth interviewed by Joe Nazzaro in Horizon NL#33: There was one wonderful occasion, not long out of drama school, when I played a small part in Quatermass and the Pit; in fact it was before the title came up. I was in Los Angeles as a spear-holder for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and apparently the film had just been shown on television. I was walking down the street and somebody came up to me and said, "My God, I saw you last night! You were in that film Quatermass and the Pit!" I think they had cut most of my lines; I had something like two lines, and yet somebody had seen that and remembered it."
Gareth (Horizon NL#21): I've done some voice overs, and would love to do more, because you're not immediately identifiable. A lot of people disagree with me on this one, but my attitude and my agent's also, is not to do visual adverts because to do that you either have to be very careful what I say here - I don't mean it disparagingly - you either have to be unknown or very well known to get away with it. My agent once said to me: "I won't let you do adverts, because if I put you up for Hamlet - I'm too old for that now, that's just an example - if I put you up for Hamlet, it's going to be very difficult for the director to see you as Hamlet if he's seen you advertising washing powder five times a night for the last ten weeks." I could see his point, and so that has been my policy. When I was first into the business I did do a couple of adverts, but none since.
at the Aldwych in London, with the RSC. Gareth has taken part in
Under Milk Wood between 3 and 5 times.
Program notes from the RSC programme: This production was first seen in June 1967 when it joined last year's Stratford season. The following month it moved into the RSC's London repertoire at the Aldwych Theatre, and then visited Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Cardiff, before returning to Stratford in the autumn. In the new year it went to America and played (with The Shrew) a six week season at the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles. We have no reason to believe that Gareth was on any of these tours.
Gareth had two parts, he was playing Margarelon who is a son of Priam the King of Troy and according to the programme the prologue was done by Ian Dyson or Gareth Thomas. Cressida was played by Helen Mirrem.
Gareth in The Prydonian Renegrade: I've said this at conventions many times and nobody's ever picked it up and made an issue of it. In 1969 when I was 24 I was a spearholder at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the first time I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company. And there was a gentleman who was about five or six years older than me, and we were doing Troilus and Cressida and he was playing Hector, and I actually understudied him, and that was Pat Stewart. And the fact that Blake actually understudied Star Trek - but nobody's ever picked that up and I find it fascinating.
Dr Faustus and Much Ado About Nothing (See 1968) may have been on tour.
Gareth (FCG#7): I've been in Detroit years and years ago in 1969 with the RSC. They were wiring the blossoms on the trees, because it was May Day. Outside Hudson's, I think. It was the first time that I got somewhere, and they wouldn't take money. "What do you mean, you won't take money?" and they said, "You've got to have a credit card!" I said, "I don't have a credit card. I'm English!"